Stratfor reports on Middle East

Syria: Airstrikes Hit Town Near Damascus, Activists Say March 4, 2016 | 16:09 GMT Airstrikes hit the rebel-controlled town of Douma, east of Damascus, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, AFP reported March 4. It unclear who carried out the airstrikes, although Douma has been a target for Syrian government forces throughout the civil war. Local activists via Facebook blamed Russia for the March 4 airstrikes, adding that the town was also being bombarded by heavy artillery. Despite a March 3 statement by U.N. Special Envoy for Syria Staffan de Mistura that progress is being made in Syria, numerous violations of the country's tenuous cease-fire have been reported. Iraq: Thousands Protest Corruption Across Country March 4, 2016 | 14:44 GMT Large demonstrations are ongoing in Baghdad and in provinces across Iraq, with tens of thousands of people demanding government reforms and protesting state corruption, Alsumaria News reported March 4. In Baghdad, large crowds are gathered in front of the Green Zone. Demonstrations are reportedly taking place in Wasit, Karbala, Babil, Maysan, Basra and Najaf provinces as well. A large number of those taking part in the protests are said to be followers of influential Shiite leader Muqtada al-Sadr. Protesters are demanding change, but a proposed Cabinet reshuffle in Iraq risks upsetting the country's delicately balanced government. Syria: Jabhat Al-Nusra Militants Fleeing To Iraq, Source Says March 4, 2016 | 15:43 GMT According to a Syrian military analyst, hundreds of fighters from al Qaeda-linked Jabhat al-Nusra are fleeing Syria for Anbar and Salahuddin provinces in Iraq, with thousands more expected to follow. The fighters' relocation in Iraq will pose a major problem for Iraqi army and paramilitary forces, the analyst added. Stratfor was not able to verify the source's claims. Neither Jabhat al-Nusra nor the Islamic State are included in the patchwork cease-fire currently in place in Syria.

Torture and American Values

The guy who argued that torture is perfectly legal

Last year, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence put out its report on the use of torture by the CIA in the years after the 2001 attacks. The executive summary of the report runs more than 300 pages, not including the notes, and lays out in excruciating detail the process by which the CIA -- the Government in general -- decided to torture more than 100 people over three years, and the methods used in the torture.

I am most interested in how we decided to abandon our traditional values and our stated policies and laws to behave in such systematically depraved ways. As the Senate report makes clear, many people, even within the CIA (not the most squeamish of entities) were made physically sick by what the "special interrogators" were doing. All the way up the chain of command, CIA and White House people explained the legal and moral problems with these "enhanced" methods. FBI investigators tried to convince the CIA that torture was unnecessary and even counterproductive. So why did the program go forward?

There appear to be two basic answers. First, the Office of Legal Counsel, led by John Yoo, convinced leadership that the methods did not contravene international or US law. People in the position to decide were too cowardly to resist the argument that because we were attacked, we had the right to do whatever we wanted, and Yoo gave them bureaucratic cover. Once the Washington Post got wind of certain practices and threatened to report them, these craven, immoral government hacks panicked and went back to OLC to be reassured that they would not be held accountable for their actions. Yoo promised they would be OK.

Second, two sadistic creeps masquerading as psychologists misapplied training given them by the Air Force to act out their own sick fantasies of power. John Mitchel and Bruce Jessen had been taught how to resist certain nasty interrogation techniques in the Air Force SERE program, but used that training in the opposite way, to be nasty themselves. Mitchell, misunderstanding the consequences and applications of "learned helplessness," decided that they could be used to get information from prisoners.

The two sadistic morons who conducted the CIA's torture program.

Mitchell was wrong, not just morally but factually and theoretically. That makes him an idiot as well as a sadist. That Jessen went along only means he became sidekick to a fool -- and what does that make him?

Our system, though, is supposed to prevent small-minded men like these from coming to positions of sufficient power to commit the evil they did. That's where we failed.

Clinton Said it Less Directly ...

... and Mark Thiessen did no like it.

It's true that Trump does not employ violence or terrorism in his efforts to gain the White House. That's a big deal, of course. Hitler's avid use of literal terror and his active flaunting of the fact that the Weimar government was unable to stop him were the defining characteristics of the Nazi reign.

It's also true that Trump is appealing to the same crowd that liked Hitler -- aristocrats and politically disengaged masses -- using very similar rhetoric.

So let's be clear. ISIS really is like Hitler. Trump just sounds like him.

Sound Familiar?

As long as we are on the subject, does this remind you of anyone?

He has no record of public service, but wants to gain the most powerful position in the country. He gains in popularity by tapping into the anger and resentment of an ethnic population that feels recently dispossessed of its cultural birthrights. He calls for the exclusion and prosecution of ethnic minorities within his country. His rhetoric emphasizes a patriotism of collective past greatness, and the need to return to that greatness. He has no particular policy proposals that make any sense, just grandiose and impractical declarations. He says that the system needs an outsider to tear it down and star again. The politicians around him are so embarrassed by his stridency and the notoriety it brings that they will not stand up to him and call him out for his practices.

      

Now, I know I will raise the ire of a whole lot of people by making this comparison, but it's time to shake off the political correctness Trump and his followers so detest and call things as  they are.

So far, only because Trump has gained no power, he has done no serious damage. He probably would not and could not commit the atrocities executed by Hitler.

But Trump is following the playbook of the worst and most dangerous kind of demagogue. Taking him lightly is foolish. He needs to be put in his place by the Republican Party so we do not slip closer to the harm he could bring.

Have any doubts? I recommend to you Hannah Arendt, from Origins of Totalitarianism:

It has frequently been pointed out that totalitarian movements use and abuse democratic freedoms in order to abolish them. This is not just devilish cleverness on the part of the leaders or childish stupidity on the part of the masses. Democratic freedoms may be based on the equality of all citizens before the law; yet they acquire their meaning and function organically only where the citizens belong to and are respected by groups or form a social and political hierarchy…
            Indifference to public affairs and, neutrality on political issues, are themselves not sufficient cause for the rise of totalitarian movements. The competitive and acquisitive society of the bourgeoisie had produced apathy and even hostility toward public life not only, and not even primarily, in the social strata that were exploited and excluded from active participation in the rule of the country, but first of all in its own class…Both the early apathy and the later demand for monopolistic dictatorial direction of the nation of the nation’s foreign affairs had their roots in a way and philosophy of life so insistently and exclusively centered on the individual’s success or failure in ruthless competition that a citizen’s duties and responsibilities could be felt to be a needless drain on his limited time and energy…

Schilling Owes No Apology

ESPN baseball commentator Curt Schilling was suspended yesterday for a tweet in which he compared ISIS to Adolf Hitler. That's a silly, oversensitive thing to do.

ESPN's publicity antennae went off because Muslim and Jewish groups found the tweet objectionable, and ESPN wants nothing to do with anything that might alienate two large, advertising-consuming groups like those. But what can it mean that the tweet was "completely unacceptable"?

ISIS has developed an officially sponsored, systematic approach to raping little girls. It has attempted to wipe from the face of the earth all evidence of life before its brand of cruel, ignorant, nasty Islam. It is led by psychopath.

Comparisons across time and culture are always fraught, and it serves no purpose to engage in talk about "who is the biggest victim." Schilling's tweet therefore did no serious good. Then again, it was a tweet, for goodness sake.

People who cannot handle the comparison need to get over themselves. Jews do not have a monopoly on suffering, and not every remark about the Holocaust needs to be clearer through B'nai Brith. Schilling did not condemn Islam, he condemned a bunch of murderous thugs who claim Islam as justification. Those who do not like it can say so, but ESPN once again took the path of craven sycophancy.

Shame

Why Education in History is So Important

What students learn matters.

For some people, they ought to learn certain ideas: that the United States is "exceptional," that its leaders are generally motivated by a desire to liberate the world, that its economic system of free enterprise promotes innovation and freedom, and the like. These people, many of whom protested a revision of the College Board Advanced Placement Exam in US History, understand that students' experiences in school help frame their view of the world, and they want kids to share their particular view.

To an extent, that's not only right, it's unavoidable. I want my students to believe that dictatorship causes suffering (most of the time), that freedom of expression is as productive as it is morally preferable (most of the time), that the rule of law is essential to political effectiveness.

The reaction to the AP curriculum therefore was not totally unreasonable, but it was badly skewed. There is nothing wrong, for example, with promoting the idea that Americans in the south were proud of slavery. They were. They defended the institution with the very last of their blood and treasure, and there was very limited dissent from this view of things. These facts are unfortunate and maybe even embarrassing, but they are true, and people need to understand them if they are to know US history. (They also probably need to know those facts to understand the defense of the Confederate flag and the Black Lives Matter movement.)

That the College Board could revise the test in the face of political pressure reveals the bureaucratic nature of that organization, but it also highlights the urgency of teaching kids to think for themselves, and to ask questions about the facts.

I would rather that they learn to ask: was the United States really exceptional? How? Was it exceptional in the way many leaders said it was? Is that good? Has the United States, by and large, promoted freedom in the world? How? Why? Is our economic system truly based on the market? Do we want it to be? Why?

Questions are much better than answers.

Why NFL Discipline is Such a Circus (Not in the Way it Wants)

The National Football League makes money by drawing attention to itself. It feeds off the gossip-girl behavior of ESPN and the morning pregame shows, and only benefits as long as there is something to talk about, even if it is salacious.

Some news items, however, are less good for the league. Junior Seau's death, probably resulting from repeated blows to the head suffered as a literal poster boy for hard hits, is one such item, and the league and its minions would prefer it not get much attention.

Also, the brutal behavior of many of its players, including Ray Rice and Greg Hardy, reflect the inherent, embarrassing violence and entitlement surrounding these very rich, poorly educated young men.

Roger Goodell is the primary problem, though. Because he runs a three-ring circus, his predilections and training lean toward the public relations gesture, the short-term image, and the political expedient. As a result of the Collective Bargaining Agreement and the league charter, however, he is also the sole dispenser of discipline on the league level, and that is a problem.

Goodell's punishment of Tom Brady is downright ridiculous. It may well be within his power, but it has more to do with his desire to show his independence from Patriots owner Robert Kraft than it does with any principles of law or fairness. It's just another embarrassment for him in a long line of recent debacles.

Goodell, like many Americans, including the current governor of Wisconsin, think that justice can be determined through popularity and politics. It cannot. Politics is a a useful thing; it allows for the peaceful distribution of power and treasure. Judges, however, should always be isolated from its operations, however, because what is just often is unpopular. Frankly, I could not care less what happens to Tom Brady of any other NFL player. The actions of the league demonstrate, however, what happens when crime and punishment are confused with politics.

The Obergefell Decision is Incorrect

I think the Supreme Court decision in Obergefell v. Hodges, which declared that state prohibition of gay marriage is unconstitutional, is incorrect. I can't find a right to marry in the Constitution.

That's not to say that I think gay couples should not be married. Every state in the union, and the federal government as well, should endorse and protect same-sex marriages. There is not earthly reason to prohibit it; the arguments made by opponents are silly and often contradictory. As I noted in the space earlier, Justice Scalia's dissent in the case was especially embarrassing. No one, for example, has a First Amendment right to refuse to interact with gay people in the public sphere. That's nonsense.

Also, I think the Supreme Court decision in Lawrence v. Texas is absolutely correct. Justice Kennedy's opinion is that case made precisely the right point when it said that

liberty presumes an autonomy of self that includes freedom of thought, belief, expression, and certain intimate conduct....  The petitioners are entitled to respect for their private lives. The State cannot demean their existence or control their destiny by making their private sexual conduct a crime. Their right to liberty under the Due Process Clause gives them the full right to engage in their conduct without intervention of the government.

To outlaw homosexual conduct is as much an invasion into basic liberty as it would be to outlaw heterosexual conduct as a whole. This kind of government intrusion is exactly the kind of this the 9th Amendment was written to prevent. 

Marriage, on the other hand, is not private. It is an explicitly public act, recognized (or not) by religious, social, or political communities. It's not conducted in private, and has no serious bearing on other protected behavior. One can be gay, straight or otherwise whether one is married or not. Although Justice Roberts dissent was unnecessarily uncivil, I think he was right. He said, in part,

Today the Court takes the extraordinary step of ordering every State to license and recognize same-sex marriage. Many people will rejoice at this decision, and I begrudge none their celebration. But for those who believe in a government of laws, not of men, the majority’s approach is deeply disheartening…

The majority’s decision is an act of will, not legal judgment. The right it announces has no basis in the Constitution or this Court’s precedent. The majority expressly disclaims judicial “caution” and omits even a pretense of humility, openly relying on its desire to remake society according to its own “new insight” into the “nature of injustice…

That is, the right to gay marriage is a legal one, to be protected by political process, not a constitutional one. I think Justice Kennedy and the four justices who signed his opinion went a step too far.

Why, Exactly, Should We Care What Bibi Netanyahu Thinks?

Bibi Netyanyahu does not like President Obama's deal with Iran. We should not be surprised, since he has opposed any negotiations with Iran all along. Fair enough.

So what?

Israel has been, in some cases, an ally of the United States in a region of the world in which the US needs as many allies as it can get. It is a democracy, it is not Islamist, and it has extensive cultural ties to the US, especially in the form of millions of Jews who play an important role in American politics. For these reasons, President Obama ought to pay attention to what Israeli leaders say.

On the other hand, Netanyahu himself has not done a lot to promote American interests in the Middle East. His heavy-handed treatment of Palestinians, both in and out of Israel, continues to provide motivation and opportunity for terrorist recruitment. He has done little, if anything, to help settle the conflicts created by the Arab Spring, in part because he does not like the idea of strong Muslim democracies -- or democracies at all, come to think of it. He has deliberately inserted himself into American politics in violation of all diplomatic protocols, especially between allies.

And, again, the United States needs as many allies in the region as possible. Iran is no friend of ISIS, and Saudi Arabia has been reluctant to help out on that front, at times. Israel is not exactly overextending itself in stopping the spread of a menace far more dangerous to it than to the US, but neither has it been appreciative of US efforts there.

In sum, Bibi can say what he wants, but I don't know why anyone should listen to him.

"Southern pride" is just as bad as Holocaust denial

People who argue that the Confederate flag stands for their "heritage," rather than any racial agenda are either hopelessly ignorant or in deep denial (or they are outright liars.) The Civil War was fought over slavery, pure and simple. If you want to say people were defending a way of life (dependent on slavery) or states' rights (to allow slavery) or heritage (of brutality and violence perpetrated on blacks by whites), that's fine, so long as you acknowledge the root of it all. Marching in support of the flag, then, is marching in support of an especially virulent form of racism. Of course, anyone has the right to support such things, but to march and also to deny the cause is a combination of stupidity and cowardice.


from Style Weekly 

Effective Students and Standardized Testing

In an earlier post, I noted the obvious: that the ultimate goal in all teaching (and therefore in all educational policy) is to produce effective students -- people who can do the things we want them to be able to do. The problem for teachers and policy makers, though, lies in identifying these abilities and then assessing whether students have them. Neither step is especially easy, but the Common Core Standards attempt to achieve both.

According to the developers of these standards, "the Common Core State Standards establish clear, consistent guidelines for what every student should know and be able to do in math and English language arts from kindergarten through 12th grade." In theory, at least, the program "focuses on developing critical-thinking, problem-solving, and analytical skills." In other words, the developers have determined that they prefer to cultivate certain skills rather than emphasizing the retention of certain prescribed content. They have identified the abilities they believe kids should have.

In the abstract, I endorse these choices. In my own work, I spend much more time thinking about how to teach kids to do things than about how to get them to remember things. And, really who can object to the idea of improving "critical thinking and problem solving?"

Perhaps the most underestimated or misunderstood truth in education, however, is the extreme difficulty of assessing such things, even if we can nail down what, exactly, the phrases mean. Critical thinking happens only internally, in the brain of the thinker. In order to know whether someone is doing it, then, we have to design ways for her to reveal what is going on her mind. In other words, she needs to communicate with us. As a result, the means of communication we choose are at least as important as the skills we identify. Not only that, but we have to help the student communicate in our preferred medium so that we can see what she is thinking.

No one thinks that the ultimate goal -- effectiveness -- is the same as taking a paper and pencil test.Very few adults take tests as a part of their daily lives; few employers care how well their employees do it, no one does it for fun, and it is not an element of good parenting. The question, then, is why we want anyone to take a test as a way of assessing her effectiveness.

The answer is that we need some proxy for "effectiveness." We need to find the elements of adult effectiveness (critical thinking, for example) and then measure whether people have those elements. Tests might be able to do that.

Also, maybe not.

Scalia (Once Again) Undermines His Own Institution

Antonin Scalia would like to think that he is the lone defender of the United States Constitution, and the stalwart member of the Supreme Court. He talks (and talks) about how the "liberal" members of the Court and the promoters of a "homosexual agenda" (a phrase he actually used in an earlier dissent) are usurping the rights of the majority to pronounce homosexuality immoral.

Antonin Scalia is wrong. No one is more responsible for the disintegration of political discourse in this country than he is. His repeated ad hominem attacks on his colleagues, his insistence on emotional, irrational and irresponsible statements in dissenting opinions, he refusal to accept the necessity of stepping out of the limelight in order to maintain at least an appearance of impartiality, help undercut the very rule of law hos purports to defend.

His latest rant, after the Court struck laws that did not accept gay marriages from other states, makes hi look like a fool, and the Supreme Court like a dysfunctional group of political hacks. If he opposes gay marriage on personal religious grounds, that's his right. I think such beliefs are selfish, myopic and out of touch, but OK. If he believes that the Court reached incorrect conclusions, it's his job to dissent. But to ignore the dignity of the Court and launch a campaign against it is unprofessional and harmful.

In my opinion, he is coming quite close to impeachable offenses.

What I Don't Understand About the Rachel Dolezal Case

Here's what I think I do understand about the strange case of Rachel Dolezal:

• Ms. Dolezal's experiences bring her to the conclusion that she is more "black" than "white." Since racial designations in the United States have very little to do with outward appearance (as demonstrated by the fact that she had to be "outed" by her own parents), this is not a nonsensical thing to do. 
• Many leaders of Civil Rights Movement and other black leaders have been very light skinned. See, for example, the aptly named Walter White, one of the founding members of the NAACP.

Walter White, son of two parents born into slavery, identified as black.

• Many African-Americans resent it when white Americans co-opt "black culture" to suit their own needs. As rapper Talib Kweli noted, this kind of behavior may be intended as sympathetic, but usually it's just exploitative or selfish. That Ms. Dolezal reportedly sued Howard University for not showing her work because she was white only reinforces this view.

Here's what I do not think I understand:

• Why exactly are people so angry at Ms. Dolezal. The whole point of her story is that race is socially constructed in so many ways. She did make up a story, but the whole concept of race in the United States is a story, fabricated by those in power so they could stay in power. The episode makes me sad, not angry.
• Whom did she harm? Kweli says that she probably took positions from women of color when she led the Spokane NAACP, and I suppose that's right. But if there were so many people clamoring for the job, why did she get it?
• Why is this about white privilege? That's not to say the sense of entitlement felt by white Americans is not a problem in general, but it seems to me that we have to be careful about how we use the term lest it lose all meaning.

Effective Students = Effective Schools

If we are to achieve Thomas Jefferson's dream of an informed, independent polity, we need effective schools. Children need to acquire certain skills in order to function politically and economically in our society, and so adults need to hep them acquire such skills. Some people would like to think that home schooling is the best way to attain that goal, but they are being unrealistic at very least, and may even be wrong in their basic conclusions. If "society" needs young people to be educated, then "society" must do the educating, and that means we need schools.


One serious problem with this conclusion, however, is that bad schools are at least as harmful as no school at all. They may be physically dangerous, they may teach kids that life sucks because it is boring or arbitrary, and they may train people in destructive habits. As a result, we cannot just say we want schools; we want schools that teach effectively.
So, what makes an effective school?

The best answer -- and I do not mean this facetiously or cynically -- is that effective students make effective schools. In one sense, this statement is not very helpful. Students with the talent, discipline, and family support necessary to succeed don't need a lot of help from professional teachers. (Let's call this the First Premise of School Evaluation.) These kids will find a way to do well even despite bad teaching. If everybody in the school has to tools when he arrives, then the school looks, and maybe even is, a good school. Admission offices at selective private schools, like the one I work in, understand this fact, and seek applicants who will make the institution and the community stronger.

The less obvious sense of the statement is more important. Our goal is not to have effective schools, but to have effective students. The only reasonable measure of a school, therefore, is whether its graduates can so what they need to do when they leave. (This will be the Second Premise.) If a school's alumni, by and large, live happy and productive lives, then the school has met its ultimate purpose.

Of course, if we go back to the First Premise, though, we can't know whether the alumni's happiness and productivity came as a result of or despite the actions of the school. To evaluate the schools themselves. therefore, we need to find a way to measure the difference between the kid when he arrived and when he left.

This is a difficult thing to achieve, and will be the subject of a number of later posts.

"Reading The Master and the Margarita in Saint Petersburg" by Lucy Papchristou

An Examination of the Effects of Samizdat on Domestic and

Transnational Relationships in the Former Soviet Bloc

            On March 5, 1953, the citizens of the Soviet Union breathed a sigh of relief. Joseph Stalin was dead. In the years following his death up until the demise of the Soviet Union, the intellectual classes engaged in an elaborate system of underground publishing called samizdat, which involved not only the various literary and political factions of the Soviet Union but also intellectual circles in the West. The primary paradigm of the Soviet Union during this time was that the Soviet government had a monopoly on the possession and circulation of ideas and thought. While there certainly existed in great numbers samizdat works of political and social significance, the true threat to the Soviet regime samizdat posed was not in its content, but in its very existence, in what it stood for. Samizdat was a kind of “gateway dissent,” deriving its power from its ability to build foundations—connections between people of different backgrounds living on opposite ends of the globe—upon which future change could occur. Thus the content of the works was not of great importance; rather, it was the effect experienced by each person or social group as the clandestine material was passed from hand to hand that generated the most powerful dissent. By creating this channel of communication to encourage the exchange of thought, samizdat served to subvert the paradigm of the Soviet regime.

            One of the most important effects of samizdat stemmed from the quintessential characteristics of the text itself. Samizdat was produced by individually typing-out the works on privately-owned typewriters due to a lack of copy machines, the few of which were operated exclusively by the government. Once finished, the typescripts were then shared among a circle of trustworthy friends and acquaintances.^[1] Often retyped by dozens of typists during their lifetime, the typescripts were riddled with typos and grammatical errors.^[2] Ann Komaromi calls samizdat an “object-sign,” meaning that the physical product has value in and of itself.^[3] A western reviewer describes this idealization from the Russian perspective: “‘the memory of a first encounter with Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s Gulag Archipelago is as much a physical memory—the blurry mimeographed text, the dog-eared paper, the dim glow of the lamp switched on late at night—as it is one of reading the revelatory text itself.’”^[4]

            The visceral feelings experienced from the examination of the text had great implications for the ideological connections the work eventually served to form. The name “samizdat” is a parody of the word Gosizdat, the acronym for the state publishing house,^[5] and the underground publishing houses milked the idea that samizdat was a clandestine parody of the powerful state institution to their advantage. Komaromi describes how samizdat was an “opportunity for carnivalesque consumption, something on which to get high.”^[6] There was a primitive sense of thrill derived from circulating, possessing, and reading such illicit material. However, the real danger samizdat posed to the Soviet regime was not due to the content which so enthralled the reader, but what it represented. In an article written for Canadian Slavonic Papers entitled “From Gosizdat to Samizdat and Tamizdat,” D. Pospielovsky calls samizdat a “historically unprecedented phenomena” because it is “a product of a system which rejects and bans independent thought as a matter of principle…” not because it was “considered to be a direct threat to the public order.”^[7] From the perspective of the Kremlin, neither the subject nor the content of work mattered as much as what it represented. Samizdat was an act of restoration—returning power back into the hands of the people. This posed a great threat to the Gosizdat, who had previously had control over the circulation of ideas and was now unable to ease the flow. On this most basic level, samizdat formed a connection between author and reader—not because of any political agenda espoused or cultural phenomenon elucidated, but merely due to its physical presence and tangibility.

            The circulation of samizdat caused immediate and widespread government crackdowns, proving that the material did in fact have an effect on the ability of the Soviet government to operate in the way in which it wanted to. The empowerment people experienced as a result of distributing and reading samizdat breached the concrete walls of Soviet control. The first government action occurred in September of 1965 when two writers, Andrei Sinyavksy and Yuli Daniel, were arrested and charged under article 70, which prohibited “agitation or propaganda carried on for the purpose of subverting or weakening the Soviet Regime.”^[8] After a number of resulting protests and three petitions signed by Sakharov and Solzhenitsyn, the XXIII Congress passed 190-1 and 190-3 into the Criminal Code. The articles condemned public protest and the dissemination, production, or printing of “anti-Soviet slander.”^[9] The head of the KGB in 1970, Yuri Andropov, went so far as to say, “the Committee for State Security is taking the requisite measures to terminate the efforts of individuals to use ‘samizdat’ to disseminate slander against the Soviet state…they are under criminal prosecution…”^[10] The “prosecution” of Alexander Solzhenitsyn ended in his expulsion from the Soviet Union in 1974, and Natalya Gorbanevskaya, a human rights activist, was sent to a psychiatric facility in 1969 for two years.^[11] While the preceding examples prove that samizdat was capable of disturbing the foundations of the Soviet government, as the following examples will demonstrate, the subversiveness of samizdat lay not in its content, but in its power to bring otherwise disparate groups of people together and lay the seeds for future dissent.

            In an example of a second class of connection formed by samizdat, the actions of two disparate political groups resulted in the revolutionizing of the very structure of the underground publishing houses. Their specific discussions, however, were irrelevant to the outcome of their relationship: the subversion of the Soviet political paradigm. The two groups involved were the socialists and the democrats, the former of which revered Leninism and the old Soviet ways and the latter of which turned their heads wistfully towards Western liberal democracy.^[12] When Brezhnev visited Washington in June of 1973, socialists and democrats were thrown into widespread debate over the possible source of reforms in the Soviet Union, for which both sides lay in hopeful expectation as a result of the détente.^[13] Eventually, Medvedev was worn down and conceded that pressure from the West and from the lower Russian classes could in fact generate change. This democrat “victory,” which crowned Sakharov as the “conscience of the Soviet dissent movement,”^[14] had profound implications for the future of  samizdat.

            While Sakharov’s deification may appear to be the outcome of the debate, the more profound result actually involved the democratization of the samizdat system, a process which served to undermine the paradigm of the Soviet Union. After the democrats obtained control over samizdat and gained credibility in the eyes of the other dissident factions, some party members expressed a desire to reorganize and rejuvenate the democratic movement. Plans were made to unite democrats using kolizdat—collective samizdat produced using a “‘home-made printing apparatus’”^[15]—so that information and ideas could flow more efficiently. However, another group of democrats, among them P. A. Abovin-Egides and P. Podrabinek, believed that it was in the best interests of the democrats to reach over to other dissident groups, such as the socialists and the Slavophiles.^[16] A third internal faction believed that democrats should work towards going “‘back to the people’” by making an effort to write a “‘common language’” with “‘men on the street.’”^[17] All three of these ideas were extremely important for the future of samizdat. The first two proposals were all about facilitating connections, both within the faction and among other dissident groups. Stronger connections meant a more reliable flow of information and therefore a better-armored militia of dissent to wage peaceful war on the Soviet government. The third proposal, in which the democrats strove to relate to the common man, was in fact borrowed from their own political ideologies. It was only when these ideas were implemented, however, that the democrats began to challenge the authority of the Soviet government.

            The concept of the role of the individual in society, closely tied to the philosophical concept of democracy, was another important aspect of samizdat that aided dissidents in their quest to subvert the Soviet system. The Russian dissident Andrei Amalrik believes that in contrast to most dissident movements, samizdat was unique in that it did not require the individual to “sacrifice [his or her] ‘I’ for the sake of the general public.”^[18] The “I” was in fact elevated to previously unforeseen status in the dissident movement. However, instead of living just for oneself—for the sake of the “I”—the individual became part of a larger collection of “I”s, living “with all and for all.”^[19] Everything about samizdat, from its production to consumption, therefore became an act of searching for and expressing the self within a network of similarly-seeking souls. This confluence of otherwise isolated people was essentially the creation of a make-shift democracy. Democracy—from the Greek demos meaning people—is fundamentally concerned with establishing a chain of communication between the government and its citizens. The government knows what its citizens think, and the citizens are able to criticize the government. In Soviet Russia, the democrats were essentially building a miniature model of a democracy within the confines of an extremely rigid communist system. Not only did this democracy aid the flow of ideas, but its very existence was poisonous to the Soviet regime, whose survival depended upon universal acceptance of communist ideals. This concept of going back to the people, of involving everyone—not just the intellectual circles—in the dissident movement, directly subverted the contemporary paradigm: the Soviet government has a complete monopoly on the flow of thought.

            Although the process by which the samizdat system was democratized was facilitated by the existence of samizdat (all of the socialist-democrat and democrat-democrat discussions were conducted via samizdat), the subversion of the paradigm of the Soviet Union was not a result of the content of the debate. The substance of the debate was not, after all, about ways to bring samizdat back to the people or create a network of “I” spheres. Samizdat itself accomplished that organically; its very existence and facilitation of the connection between the two dissident groups caused that outcome—not anything that was actually verbally communicated. In the next and final example of the effects of samizdat, a similar phenomenon occurred when two countries banded together to, albeit unwittingly, sow the seeds of future revolutions.

            The final case of a samizdat relationship most aptly demonstrates the concept of “gateway dissent” because the connection formed between the two parties served to lay the foundation for more potent acts of dissent in the future. This connection is singular in nature because it involves two vastly different groups of people: émigré Poles residing in Sweden and the opposition forces back in Poland. During the period of détente in the 1970s, Poland looked toward neutral Sweden as a possible “channel” between them and the West, a bridge across the mighty Iron Curtain.^[20] In the early 1970s, Poland and Sweden began to take advantage of the two countries’ shared Baltic Sea ports to circulate samizdat material—a method far safer and convenient than transporting the works by land, as was previously done.^[21] In 1976, however, the articles being smuggled changed. After a series of antigovernment protests in Poland that spurred the founding of a number of human rights and social change organizations, an increasing number of underground publishing houses began to crop up in Poland, notably Niezależna Oficyna Wydawnicza (Independent Printing House, NOWa).^[22] Almost all of these new publishing houses, including NOWa, received their supplies (mimeograph machines, typewriter ribbons, pressure rollers, etc.) from Sweden.^[23] In addition, their relationship with Sweden allowed the dissidents to quickly develop strong relationships to a larger émigré complex in important Western cities, most notably Paris, London, and New York.^[24] (Kultura, perhaps the most influential of all Polish samizdat journals, was published by a Pole living in Paris.^[25]) For the first time since the birth of the Soviet Union—or at least since the end of Khrushchev’s Thaw—the Iron Curtain had been successfully breached. And samizdat itself was the vehicle which carried these relationships over the Curtain.

            But what is the significance of this growing alliance between Poles and Swedes? The important question to ask here is how this relationship was perceived back at the Kremlin. The answer requires a leap forward to 31 August, 1980, when the Polish Solidarity movement (Solidarność)—began at the Gdańsk Shipyard,^[26] the first non-communist labor union in the Soviet Union.^[27] Samizdat, as it turned out, played a pivotal role in the development of this movement. Pamphlets were often handed out at the shipyard and activists frequently published organizational announcements to inform the public about what was going on.^[28] The development of Solidarność was a crucial step towards the destruction of the Iron Curtain and the dissolution of the Soviet bloc. In June 1989, members of Solidarność were elected to seats in Parliament, electing in August of that year Tadeusz Mazowiecki, the first noncommunist premier since the 1940s.^[29]

            But what does this have to do with Sweden? The answer is that without the relationship Polish dissidents formed with Sweden (which led to, of course, the founding of numerous samizdat publishers, many of which aided in the circulation of samizdat during the Solidarność years), Solidarność would not have been nearly as organized, efficient, or efficacious as it was. The samizdat produced in the early 1970s with the help of Sweden can therefore be classified as “gateway dissent,” for it lay the foundations for future acts of far more extensive and profound dissent. However, the samizdat of the early 1970s did not cause the events of 1980 in its content, but rather in its existence; the relationships it formed during that time led directly to Poland’s ability to start a large-scale revolution. In this way, Swedish-Polish samizdat did indeed subvert the existing political paradigm of the Soviet Union—although it did take nearly a decade to lay out the groundwork. Solidarność proved that the people did have a voice of their own separate from the dictations of the Kremlin—and they proved this by their usage of samizdat.

            The existence of samizdat in the Soviet Union was one of the most remarkable acts of dissent in the history of oppressed populations. It had a strong presence in many countries in the Soviet bloc and involved thousands of people from a variety of ethnic and cultural backgrounds who would have otherwise remained socially isolated. However, despite the positive outcomes samizdat produced, what was written down on the page was not of great importance in the grander scheme of events. The discussions between the socialists and the democrats did not reach the ears of the Kremlin; what did was due more to what samizdat stood for than what it was actually trying to express. The connection formed between the Sweden and Poland in the 1970’s—not the content of the samizdat which they produced together—helped to set to the stage a few years later when the Polish Solidarity movement was born. In short, presence was of more significance than substance. The effects of samizdat in the twentieth century pose interesting questions in the twenty-first. The path of Russian dissent is yet unknown. Who will step up to the plate and challenge Putin’s totalitarian monstrosity? Will it be Pussy Riot? Alexei Navalny? In the years ahead, who or what will replace samizdat?

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^[1] Ann Komaromi, “The Material Existence of Soviet Samizdat,” Slavic Review 63 (Autumn, 2004): 599.

^[2] John D.H. Downing, Radical Media: Rebellious Communication and Social Movements (London: Sage, 2001), 356.

^[3] Komaromi, “Material Existence,” 609.

^[4] Ibid, 603.

^[5] Gordon Johnston, “What Is the History of Samizdat?” Social History 24 (May, 1999): 122.

^[6] Komaromi, “Material Existence,” 605.

^[7] Dimitry Pospielovsky, “From Gosizdat to Samizdat and Tamizdat,” Canadian Slavonic Papers / Revue Canadienne des Slavistes 20 (March 1978): 46.

^[8] Tania E. Lozansky, “The Role of Dissent in the Soviet Union Since 1953,” The Concord Review 2 (1989): 7.

^[9] Ibid.

^[10] “Creating an Underground Press: Samizdat in the Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc,” Tavaana, accessed 7 April, 2014, https://tavaana.org/en/content/creating-underground-press-samizdat-soviet-union-and-eastern-bloc.

^[11] Ibid.

^[12] Hyung-min Joo, “Voices of Freedom: Samizdat,” Europe-Asia Studies 56 (June, 2004): 579

^[13] Ibid, 580.

^[14] Ibid.

^[15] Ibid, 581.

^[16] Ibid.

^[17] Ibid.

^[18] Ann Komaromi, “Samizdat and Soviet Dissident Publics,” Slavic Review 71 (Spring, 2012): 76.

^[19] Andrei Amalrik, Notes of a Revolutionary, trans. Guy Daniels (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1982), 26.

^[20] Lars Fredrik Stöcker, “The Baltic Connection: Transnational Samizdat Networks between              Émigrés in Sweden and the Democratic Opposition in Poland,” in Samizdat, Tamizdat & Beyond: Transnational Media During and After Socialism, ed. Friederike Kind-Kovács et al. (Oxford: Berghahn, 2013), 54.

^[21] Ibid, 57.

^[22] Ibid.

^[23] Ibid, 59.

^[24] Ibid.

^[25] Marek Suszko, “‘Kultura’ and European Unification,” The Polish Review 45 (2000): 183.

^[26] Stephen W. Mays, “A Synthetic Analysis of the Polish Solidarity Movement” (Graduate thesis, Marshall University, 2011), 33.

^[27] “Solidarity,” Encyclopedia Britannica, accessed 9 April, 2014, http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/553374/Solidarity.

^[28] Mays, “A Synthetic Analysis of the Polish Solidarity Movement,” 137.

^[29] “Solidarity.”